Calendar Highlights: Nov. 15, 2011

Into the west: Clements Center Fellow Susan Lee Johnson uses her study of amateur Kit Carson historians Quantrille McClung and Bernice Blackwelder and their published works to map relationships between women historians and male historical subjects, and between professional and nonprofessional U.S. western historians, at a key moment in the 20th century. She will present a Clements Center Brown Bag Lecture, “Bury My Hero at Wounded Knee: Gender, Race, and Historical Practice in the Long 1970s,” at noon Wednesday, Nov. 16, in the Texana Room, DeGolyer Library. Johnson, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is completing her new book, A Traffic in Men: The Old Maid, the Housewife, and Their Great Westerner. Presented by SMU’s Clements Center for Southwest Studies. (Right, tombstone in Kit Carson Park Memorial Cemetery, Taos, New Mexico.)

A secret history: Renowned historian and author Zvi Ben-Dor Benite will present the 11th Nate and Ann Levine Endowed Lecture in Jewish Studies at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, in McCord Auditorium, 306 Dallas Hall. Benite, professor of history and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and acting director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, will discuss “The Truly Other Jewish World History: The Ten Lost Tribes Between Jews and Christians.” His subject is a little-known but intriguing episode of early 16th-century Jewish and Christian history, in which Pope Clement VII and the Ten Tribes (almost) defeated Islam and won the Holy Land. Benite’s 2009 book, The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History, traces the legends surrounding the ancient Israelite tribes that were exiled by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE and vanished from the pages of history, but not from popular imagination. For more information, contact Serge Frolov, 214-768-4478.

Art for sale: Update that holiday gift list – SMU’s Hamon Arts Library holds its 2011 Book Sale at 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday Nov. 17-18 in the Hamon Arts Library, Owen Arts Center. Items for sale include music scores; CDs; DVDs and laserdiscs; and, of course, books on art, music, theater, dance and film, as well as fiction titles. Most items are priced between $1 and $10, and all have no sales tax – plus, the Library will take an additional 50% off all items after 3 p.m. Friday. All sales are final, cash or check only. No holds, bulk discounts or previews. For more information, contact the Hamon circulation desk at 214-768-3813.